


Of Other Fathers

by CornishGirl



Series: Of Other Fathers [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bobby to the Rescue, Family Feels, Gen, Hurt Dean, Hurt Sam, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 14:41:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7319272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CornishGirl/pseuds/CornishGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bobby Singer had watched the boys grow up in gulps and snatches, never on a daily basis. Now he saw them when they needed help with research--or when they were hurt. </p><p>And they were hurt.  Again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Other Fathers

The boys were, Bobby Singer knew, completely screwed up. 'Dysfunctional' was the term all the experts would use, the book-smart men and women with a string of letters after their names, but who nonetheless lacked all grasp of reality. Of any kind of reality the boys understood.

But how could they not be dysfunctional by normal terms? Their mother, murdered, pinned to the ceiling, burning like a pyre with her abdomen torn open. Sam too young to know, but Dean had seen it. Briefly. Before his father threw him away from the room; before John Winchester grabbed 6-month-old Sam from the crib and shoved him into his older brother's arms, shouting at him to run from the burning house, to save his baby brother.

Four years old, was Dean that night. And, that night, he was made to grow up. Childhood, for Dean, was never again what other children knew.

They drank too much, Bobby knew; or, more accurately, Dean did. Sam was one for a few beers, a glass or two of whiskey, but Dean was on the same road Bobby himself traveled. When beer didn't dull the razor edges and angles, the burn of whiskey did.

Or so they both believed.

And John, become a hunter despite other intentions - just like Sam - raising two young sons in the life because of obsession honed by grief and fear and rage. He could not let go of sons he believed might well fall victim to what had killed their mother. To what he himself feared so much.

John Winchester could see no way clear to keeping his sons whole, unharmed, unless he did it himself.

And by doing precisely that, John had forever destroyed any chance at a normal life for the sons he loved so much. Mary's sons. All that he had of her, save the ring on his left hand, the memories in his head. Sam and Dean were real. They were his children.

Bobby's, too. More now than ever.

John was dead.

# # #

They were men, Dean and Sam, but boys, still, to Bobby, who had, in gulps and snatches, seen them grow up, and they always came to the house like boys, fast and noisy. Dean drove the '67 land-yacht of a car with a sure touch, but a liking for drama. Only rarely had he floated the gleaming black boat up near the porch to berth it neatly, like a cherished vessel. He brought it in with growling power, angled it smartly, lifted dirt and gravel as the tires gripped. Now and again he smiled in the doing of it, knowing what he did; other times, it was wholly second nature. Neat, swift, precise.

Now and again, it was because Sam was hurt. And then there was nothing neat or precise about arrival, only swiftness. Only the haste to get his brother to somewhere safe, somewhere scrapes might be patched, gouges dosed, stitches stitched, and occasionally, rarely, a bullet hole might be tended. The Winchester boys avoided hospitals at all costs whenever possible, because gunshot wounds were required by law to be reported to authorities, and what they did, what their lives were, did not jibe with authority. When within a day's drive or so, bullet holes were always brought to Bobby, if they needed more tending than what they themselves could provide one another. It wasn't often, but it happened. Mostly, though, Bobby saw bruises, bites, slashes, cuts, scrapes, scratches, claw wounds, and those the boys mostly ignored, refused to explain except for a casual throwaway line. Dismissing discomfort, belittling injury.

Bobby didn't know a hunter who dwelled on such things. And John had raised hunters. But now and then, if the hurts were bad enough, a crack occurred, seemingly superficial until a guard was let down. And then the casual throwaway line, the dismissal of hurt and pain, even the coal of need, kindled into fear. Sam's fear, for Dean. Dean's, for Sam.

He sat now before the fire, did Bobby Singer, throwing back whiskey in a night lighted by little, merely two incandescent bulbs glowing elsewhere in the house; by the flames upon his hearth. Waiting for his boys.

# # #

The phone call had been terse. Dean's voice clipped, sharp, angry. Three words, no more: "Bobby? We're coming."

It was a shorthand Dean was probably completely unaware of. It was all raw tone, a taut wire of pronouncement offering no explanations, leaving no room for questions. Bobby had not caught the call, only heard the voicemail, but it was enough. He knew. Dean only sounded like that about Sam, and only when Sam was hurt.

More than ice for bruises, he thought, and dragged out of storage the largest of two first aid kits. This one was set up like a mechanic's tool chest, with drawers and cubbies. Serious stuff, including hemostats, straight needles for dosing, curved needles for sutures; syringes, vials, fixings for a saline drip, medical staples; countless other items. Powerful antibiotics, and an array of painkillers that would numb a limb or send a man straight to dreamland.

He'd put most of his money into the panic room, down in the basement. No guest room for him. A couple of couches, and one narrow bed in a cubby near the kitchen, other than his own in a small bedroom. More than once, Sam or Dean had bedded down on the floor, rolling up in a sleeping bag atop folded blankets, while the other took the narrow bed beneath the window, or crashed on the couch. He'd never quite figured out why Dean tended to opt for the floor, when the couch would bend Sam's long legs more than most. But Dean usually maneuvered it so Sam was on cushions, and he was on hardwood.

Bobby heard the rumble, the growl of a massive engine as it approached the house. Gas-guzzler, Sam had once said, and so not 'green,' as he pointedly asked Dean about the miles per gallon the big engine gave up for primal power. But the Impala was Dean's baby; he tolerated no criticism of any inch of her.

John's car, once.

Gravel sprayed, bounced against wooden steps, smacked against the front door. Bobby opened it even as, in the watery yellow illumination of an outdoor bug-light, Dean threw open the driver's door with the familiar cranky grind of metal on metal.

Bobby waited on the porch. "Is he walking?"

"Sort of." Dean threw it over a shoulder as he rounded the front of the Impala, heading for the passenger door. "Mostly."

Bobby grunted. "Then bring him up. I got the box out. You know where to plant him."

Dean shot him a quick glance of acknowledgment across the top of the car. His mobile mouth jerked briefly in a crooked smile. By that, Bobby knew whatever the problem was likely wasn't fatal.

And it eased, the tension. Bled right out of his shoulders. Breath ran easy again.

He waited in silence as Dean levered his brother up from the seat. Tall Sam was ungainly as a colt on its first legs, trying to find his balance. A hand slapped against the Impala roof for support and gripped tightly as he muttered under his breath words that Bobby couldn't discern, but knew instinctively was a string of blurted protests against his brother. Words like: "Jesus, Dean—" and "Wait, dammit—" and "Give me a minute, okay?—"

And lastly, probably, very likely, a variation of "Come on, Dean, I'm fine!"

I'm fine. Probably the two words they said more than any other, to one another. Specifically when one of them was decidedly not fine.

And yes, there it was: Bobby heard it clearly as the the younger Winchester stood completely upright, towering like a pine on the other side of the car. "I'm fine, Dean!"

Dean's condescension was every bit as predictable: "What part of 'fine' goes along with a bullet hole?"

So, it was a gunshot wound. Bobby sighed. He waited until Dean, with Sam's right arm clamped across his shoulders, aimed his brother around the massive hood of the Impala and toward the porch steps. "What body part this time?"

"Shoulder," Dean said tersely.

"I can walk," Sam protested. "You don't need to drag me, Dean!"

"Okay, fine." Dean released the arm and sent the kid off on his own as if atop a brand new two-wheeler for the very first time, waiting for the inevitable crash. "So walk."

Sam wobbled, legs spread in a bid for balance. Dean allowed him to fold and plant one knee in the dirt, then grabbed a flailing arm and hitched him up again.

"Uh-huh," Dean said, a world in the tone, and Bobby's smile flickered.

He followed silently as Dean steered Sam toward the kitchen and 'planted' him per Bobby's prior suggestion, practically stuffing him into the chair at the kitchen table. Bobby flipped on additional lights and saw that the younger man was pale and sweating. A splash of blood marred one cheek, and a purpling bruise had begun to rise along his jaw. His bottom lip was split, though the bleeding had stopped.

Before his brother could even articulate a protest, Dean told him with great clarity to shut up and proceeded to remove Sam's jacket, bloodied plaid shirt, and t-shirt. Bare now from the waist up, with miles of muscled torso exposed, Sam gritted his teeth against the pain of layers of clothing being tugged down his arms. The haphazard gauze bandage over his left shoulder now visible showed a fresh blossom of red.

"Through-and-through," Dean said. "Shouldn't be too bad, but we were close, and our kit is a little depleted from the last time. Someone forgot to refill it."

Bobby nodded and, as Sam cradled his left arm and muttered words of which his mother wouldn't approve, opened the box. "Okay. Whiskey's on the sideboard." And with methodical precision he pulled from the big box the supplies he judged necessary, and set about patching up the youngest Winchester.

# # #

Bobby had decided years before that what Dean did, when in motion, wasn't properly described as walking. Dean prowled. And when he felt helpless, when his brother—who remained his "baby" brother despite being twenty-four and indisputably a man fully grown—was sick or injured, he couldn't sit still. So, still in his thick coat, he paced. He prowled. He drank whiskey and moved back and forth between kitchen and living room, eyes never still. He watched Bobby's deft hands working on Sam's wound, watched the parade of expressions across his brother's bruised features as Sam, one-handed and using a damp towel, cleaned away the blood on his face. And occasionally, Dean fixed his gaze on distances farther than anyone else might imagine.

Bobby, glancing up now and then to monitor Dean's mood, recognized the expression: half scowl, half glare, the line of the mouth hard; the pronounced planes and angles of his face bathed, as he moved, in a chiaruscuro of shadows and light, were sharp as glass.

Mary and John in that face. The line of the nose was John's, though just slightly crooked from a long ago break. The clean hardness of his jaw was likely John's, too, though Bobby couldn't recall John without the habitual short, scruffy beard. Unlike dark-haired Sam, who favored his father, Dean's coloring was Mary's, mostly, and he had her eyes, the long-lidded, green, expressive eyes, with lashes girls would kill for. But the years had shaped him into what was ineffably Dean, neither Mary nor John; a tough boy grown into a hard man, a man formed of implacable walls, cold and unyielding.

Unless a woman was involved. And then he was all charm and boyishness, working it hard because he knew the ladies loved it. He didn't need to work it. But maybe, Bobby'd thought once, over one too many shots, it was the alpha male animal wanting to show a woman he could be other than what he was so much of the time. Other than what he needed to be.

Other than a weapon.

Prowling. On the stalk.

A good cleaning of what actually was a straightforward through-and-through bullet path in the meat of Sam's shoulder was accomplished, despite the subject's inventive swearing, with soaked swabs, tweezers to tease out bits of cloth, topical antibiotics packed into the wound, gauze pads taped down securely on both sides of the shoulder. And Bobby ignored the protests as he held Sam's wrist in place and tapped two oblong tablets from one bottle into his hand, then added two more from a different bottle.

"Every four hours," Bobby growled, and thumped down a bottle of water. It wasn't a suggestion. He'd learned long before nothing short of an order worked when they were sick or injured.

Sam scowled at the pills in his open palm, made Bobby the target a moment later, then nodded once. Oral antibiotics, heavy-duty painkillers. He knew the drill.

Bobby pointed. "Bed."

Sam gulped pills and water, then glared at him out of a too-pale, taut face and tired eyes. Teeth were set. "Maybe I don't feel like going to bed just yet. Maybe I feel like sitting up with the grownups."

Dean stopped prowling. The silence was loud for a long moment, then was broken by a quiet sentence freighted with layers of implication. "Do you need help getting there?"

Sam visibly considered mutiny, then heaved an inexpressibly deep and noisy sigh of annoyance. Resignation. He downed more water, set himself, then slowly rose beside the table. He grimaced prodigiously, wavered a moment, then steadied. He nodded determination to himself in defiance of doubts, then slowly made his way across the kitchen to the bed beneath the window.

With great care he sat down on the edge, gripping it tightly, then offered his brother a wide, sunny, baby-brother smile that was patently false. "See? Bed. Happy now?"

Dean, still grim, didn't crack a smile. He nodded once. Bobby didn't dare grin outwardly, but he allowed it to kindle inside. He began to tidy up the opened packaging, the bloodied gauze and swabs, stuck the tweezers in a glass of alcohol, and rose to throw the mess away. As he did so, Sam shook his head, muttered something, toed off his shoes, then swung his legs up and stretched out carefully on the narrow bed. He was too tall to fit properly, but he made the best of it. As he always did.

Bobby heard a long sigh, and as he turned back he saw the lines of Sam's face ease. Part of it was the painkillers beginning to work their wonder; part of it, he knew, was Sam's knowledge that he could stop. That he could simply be. He could let slip the habitual, ingrained wariness of a hunter. Now he could heal. Now he could rest.

Bobby grunted acknowledgment of that, glad he could offer more than a patching up now and then. He poured whiskey for himself, then noted that Dean had not yet moved from the place where he had stilled himself, where he had stopped pacing, stopped prowling, to watch his brother arrange himself in bed. An odd, avid expression settled into his face as he stared hard at Sam, almost as if he needed his brother to be asleep.

Sam's face was slack. His eyes were closed. He lost years, reverting to nineteen or twenty. Bobby had seen it before. The shape of his face, so different from Dean's, lost the wariness that had, year by year, replaced the open innocence of his youth.

After a moment Dean looked at Bobby. The odd expression was gone. A half-smile slipped across his face, briefly rueful, wholly boyish. "Okay," he said.

Bobby picked up the whiskey bottle sitting on the table beside the first aid box. "Refill?"

Dean glanced down at his empty glass. "Nah." He crossed slowly to the table. The grace was gone. He moved like a drunk trying to walk sober. He set down the glass with a clunk, then carefully eased arms out of his coat. With odd precision, he hung it over the back of the chair Sam had vacated. "Okay," he said again, and the tone was strange. Akin to surrender. His hands, over the coat, gripped the chair back tightly.

Bobby frowned. "Dean?"

Dean glanced briefly at his brother, cocked his head in a slight half-nod of acknowledgment, then smiled faintly at Bobby. "We've got him settled. Now you can fix me."

And Bobby saw the blood.

All the blood.

# # #

Bobby's mouth dropped open. "Jesus Christ, Dean! What the hell happened?" And then he was moving, rounding the table, reaching out.

Dean's brief grin was more like a rictus. "Same guy who happened to Sammy."

Bobby took fabric into his hands, carefully peeling away from Dean's skin the blood-soaked olive green shirt, the sodden dark tee plastered against his torso. It came away heavy. "How long you been bleeding like this, son?"

He wanted to say, And why the hell didn't you say anything to Sam?, who obviously wasn't aware. But Bobby knew that answer.

Dean gripped the back of the chair, literally holding himself on his feet. "A while. Not too long. It's better."

Better, maybe, but not good. Bobby catalogued Dean's condition rapidly. Lower back, right side: obvious entrance wound. And before Bobby could say anything, Dean freed his right hand from its grip upon the chair and tentatively touched the side of his ribcage in front, exploring with fingertips.

"Here," he said tightly. "You can feel it. See it. I checked it in the gas station."

Bobby moved to look more closely. There it was. Just a modest little knob in the flesh, nestled close to a rib. Like a knuckle beneath the surface, pushing upward. The skin over it was bruised blue, and shiny. The blood, there, was smeared and old, not 'live.' Merely transfer from the soaked t-shirt. There was no wound in front. Just a bullet, nagging against the skin as if in pregnancy. All the blood was from the entrance wound in his back.

"At least it's slowed," he muttered. Then, "Dean, this needs a hospital—"

"No."

"Look, I'm a decent field medic, but this—"

"No."

"Ya idjit, I can't go digging this deep for a bullet!"

Dean's breathing was ragged, words tight and clipped. "Don't have to. Go in from the front. Bullet's right there."

Bobby found that vision utterly appalling. "Dean, I can't—"

Dean blurted it on a rush, as if he knew the time to speak, to explain, was fast passing. "A cop was shot, Bobby!" And then, knowing the unasked question, " . . . not us. We were hunting . . . stumbled onto a drug bust that went sideways. Crossfire all the way. Collateral damage . . ." He clung to the chair. "But we can't go to a hospital. I don't know if the cop's dead or not. Either way . . ."

Bobby understood the implications clearly. Dean's wound would be reported according to protocol, but with a shot cop, dead or alive, the questions would never cease. Occam's Razor said the answer was sometimes the most obvious, and a man wounded in a cop-involved shooting, especially in a drug bust, looked awfully suspicious. Especially as the bullet might match the cop's gun. Collateral damage as an excuse, no matter how truthful, would likely, for hunters, be trampled in the rush to find Dean guilty of something.

He cast a glance at the bed hosting Sam in his drugged-out stupor. What Dean was asking him to do could not be done in the kitchen, at the table, with him seated in the chair, as with his brother.

"Couch," Bobby growled. "Can you make it that far? You got too much meat and muscle on those bones for me to carry, and Sam's outta commission."

A smothered blurt of a laugh was issued on a gasped exhalation. "Got us this far, didn't I?"

# # #

Dean's course from kitchen to living room, even with a guiding hand from Bobby on his elbow, was devoid of anything akin to steadiness. But he walked. Bobby thought possibly he might break, so rigid was he. No more prowling. No more stalking. Just a body made of pain, movements shaped out of sheer determination but lacking ease, efficiency. He walked because he had to, and if he paused, if he allowed even an infinitesimal instant of hesitation to occur, he'd go down. Bobby knew it. So did Dean.

Couch was reached. Dean paused, closed his eyes a moment, then drew in a steadying breath. "Bobby - ?"

"Gotta do the back wound first," Bobby answered. "Get yourself settled best you can; I'll fetch the box."

Dean was on the couch when Bobby returned. He'd stretched out mostly on his left side, facing the back, leaving his wound accessible. No part of the posture resembled anything of comfortable. He'd hooked his left arm under his head. Little of his face was visible, only the purity of his profile, the flexing of a muscle in his jaw, like a man chewing gum, or gritting teeth against pain.

Bobby set the big med kit on the floor, contemplated briefly, then bent and swept everything off the low coffee table in front of the couch. He parked his butt there, took scissors from the box. "Hope you're not too emotionally attached to these shirts." And before Dean could say a word, Bobby cut up the back of the loose, unbuttoned shirt, then the t-shirt beneath. He pulled away the fabric to bare the wound. "Looks like a 9 mil."

Dean's tone was muffled. "Feels like a friggin' cannon ball."

"I'll bet." Bobby placed fingers on the wound, carefully examining. As with Sam's wound, the bullet had punched through fabric, carrying fragments into the path as it fractured cells and blew apart blood vessels. There was no arterial pumping and the bleeding had slowed to a faint ooze. But Dean had lost a fair amount of blood.

In a hospital, they'd replace it. Here, Bobby couldn't.

"Listen," he said, "I'll do my best to clean this out, pack it and bandage it, but I don't like your plan for the rest of it."

Dean muttered repressively, "I think it's a peachy plan."

"Because it's yours."

"Yeah? So?"

Bobby twisted his mouth. "Guess we'll see how she goes."

# # #

'She' did not go well. Bobby's ministrations were no different than what he'd practiced on Sam, comprised of swabbing, removing thread and grit, periodic flushings with saline, but Sam's wound had been a through-and-through in the meat of his shoulder. Painful, and subject to infection if not treated properly, but this wound was different. The muscle was different, thicker. Ribs framed the wound. And a bullet remained in Dean lodged beside a rib on the other end of the disrupted furrow stretching from back to front.

Dean did as he always did with the bad ones. Just lay on one side, gripping couch cushions, and tried to make no noise, no movement that might disturb Bobby. He swore blue blazes over the little stuff. Said nothing about the big shit.

"I got good drugs," Bobby said idly, packing the wound with topicals. "You'll go nighty-night like Sam."

Dean's reply was a mutter of sheer derision.

"I can cut a stick for you to chew on."

The response was much clearer. "Shut up."

"You might've let me know about this before I started drinking whiskey."

"And I should've drunk more," Dean gritted. "Jesus, Bobby, what are you doing back there?"

"Worst is over." Bobby pressed a folded gauze pad against the wound, taped it down securely. "Well, until I go cuttin' on your front side." He pushed to his feet, scraped a sleeved forearm across his brow. "Give yourself a minute. When you think you can, turn over. I'm gonna check on your brother."

Sam was fine, he knew. But he wanted Dean to have personal time in the private hell of his pain. And if he passed out, all the better.

# # #

When Bobby returned, Dean had managed and was conscious. He lay now on his bandaged back, one hand knotted into the fabric of his tee, the other pressed, spread-fingered, against his face, hiding most of it.

The tone was excrutiatingly tight. " . . . Sammy?"

"In la-la land. Slight fever; nothing unexpected." Bobby paused, looking down at the older brother. "You sure about this?"

"Gotta come out, Bobby."

Bobby shook his head, slowly sat again upon the coffee table. He tapped the hand clamped into the front the blood-soaked tee, waited for Dean to move it, to grip another cushion. Then Bobby carefully peeled up the fabric and left it in a wet roll high on Dean's chest.

Indeed, right there, resting just below the bottom of the last of the long ribs. Were it not for the shiny bruising, the quiet little bulge, the bullet wasn't obvious to the eye. To Dean's flesh, vessels, and muscle, Bobby had an inkling, considerably more than obvious.

This was nothing Bobby had ever undertaken. But he had an idea what needed doing. "I got nothin' to knock you out. Just a local."

Dean did not remove his hand from his face. "Good enough."

"You're outta you're friggin' mind, son."

"Like that's a change."

"Don't you go bucking on me, or I'm likely to cut too deep."

"—know that."

Preliminaries were completed. Damn stubborn son of a bitch. Just like his daddy.

Bobby found the lidocaine gel, filled a fat, cottony swab, bathed a swathe of skin over and around the bullet. With most of his torso bared, Dean's breathing was visible, fast and shallow. Flesh jumped away from the lidocaine swab. Dean sucked in a startled breath.

"Give it a minute," Bobby said gently.

After more than that minute, several minutes, Bobby selected two scalpels. "You know, in the old days, they'd have a surgical spoon," he said quietly, as if lecturing. "They'd cut the flesh open, stick the spoon beneath the bullet, then dig it out."

Dean's belly flinched. "I'm not ice cream . . . don't need a spoon."

Bobby continued. "So I think I'll follow the methodology, but forsake the spoon and the digging. That okay with you?"

Dean removed the hand from his face, glaring up from cushions. "Jesus, Bobby, you gonna talk me to death?"

Scalpel in the left hand. Scalpel in the right. Both glinted in lamplight, in the flames upon the hearth. Bobby thought about it. About what it might do.

From a dead-white face, shadows cradling wide-stretched eyes, Dean stared up at him. The trust was implicit. "You gonna do this?"

Bobby didn't look at him. He simply placed the razor-sharp blade of the scalpel over the bulge of the bullet, and neatly sliced open the flesh.

Lidocaine was a good topical anesthetic. But it didn't go far beneath the skin. He saw the leap of Dean's chest, heard the gasp of a sucked in, then choked-off outcry. For a moment Dean was stuck in outraged stasis, and Bobby used it. He deftly slid the blade of one scalpel into the opening, tucked it with infinite care beneath the quiet little bulge, sliced over the stretched skin with the original scalpel, and popped the bullet out. It rolled off Dean's chest, was lost briefly in the couch cushion, then tumbled and rattled against the hardwood floor.

Dean's body was strung so tight Bobby feared the pain-bound bones might break. The muscles stretching from collarbone to jaw stood out like cord. And then the gulping, shallow gasps took him, the slow acknowledgment that the pain, though vivid, was manageable, because he made it so.

Bobby flushed the incisions, dabbed on more lidocaine, filled a syringe with peroxide, placed the needle carefully inside the two slices, and squirted the contents beneath the surface of the skin. Pink froth bubbled up.

Because it was over; because, now, he knew he could handle what had happened, and would continue to, Dean expelled a string of words forcibly merged into one: "Sonuvabitch!"

Bobby pressed gauze against the small incisions, drying damp flesh. Little blood to speak of. "Probably won't even leave a scar," he observed lightly. "'Course, that won't help with the ladies."

Dean stared up at him incredulously. "Are you friggin' nuts?"

Bobby taped gauze over the incisions. That completed, he poured tablets into his hand identical to those he'd given Sam, insisted Dean take them, and waited. After long minutes a little of the pain eased from Dean's features. He was pale, sweat drying on his face, and looked like death warmed over, but his breath ran better. The cords of his neck loosened.

Bobby reached down, found what he wanted on the floor, scooped it up. He opened Dean's right palm, dropped the bullet into it as he rose, caught his balance. His back cracked audibly. Gettin' too old for this. "Souvenir."

Dean still scowled at him. Then he rolled the bullet into his fingers, examined it. "Nine mil." He frowned, looked more closely, tilted the deformed round in the light. His tone shifted into groggy shock. "I don't believe it."

Bobby, on his feet, gazed down at the wounded man lying on his couch. "Cop's bullet?"

Dean was still frowning, mostly absent for the moment, lost in his head. "Nah. Must have been one of the drug guys." Then he looked up at Bobby, eyes wide, dark green in the shadows as the painkillers softened him, expanded his pupils. He looked - young. "It's a Winchester round."

Bobby couldn't help it. John's boys—his boys - were safe, and he had the luxury.

He began to laugh.


End file.
